Category: judaism

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. Deuteronomy 10:17

God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. Psalms 82:1

There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours.Psalms 86:8

And the king shall do as he wills. He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak astonishing things against the God of gods. He shall prosper till the indignation is accomplished; for what is decreed shall be done. Daniel 11:36

Recently, I brought up the fact that modern Christians are polytheists. On the one hand, they believe in the God of the Bible and on the other, the so-called god of philosophers or as they would put it, the god of monotheism. A commenter on my post over on WordPress brought up the fact that the early Jews were polytheists. He provided a number of verses like the ones above. I responded to him and stated that Christians have a go-to copout. They’ll argue that this is merely a recognition that people at the time worshipped other gods, gods that were mere idols. That, however, demonstrates that they are either ignorant of historical context or they know of the context and yet ignore it. We can discuss the polytheistic origins of Judaism further, but that’s not my purpose here.

My purpose here is to debase the notion of a god of (mono)theism, to disrupt that convenient narrative. A Christian on Facebook recently offered an ontological argument he confused with Godel’s Ontological Argument. That wasn’t the argument he offered. He offered another ontological argument in where ‘God’ could be replaced with ‘Allah’ or ‘Ahura Mazda’ and the result wouldn’t change. Two other people then responded and said that the refutation fails because the argument sets out to prove the god of monotheism.

The god of (mono)theism, as William Lane Craig posits, is timeless, personal, omniscient, and so on. I’ll set exegesis aside because there are ways to prove otherwise given passages in the Bible (e.g. why did god ask Adam questions in Genesis 3 if he’s omniscient?). What I want to offer instead is a new argument against the notion of a so-called god of (mono)theism. We know from mathematics that there are different infinities. Since infinity is already a large value, if we can even call it such, there’s no way for the human mind to apprehend one infinity or another, let alone distinguish them. So given that line of thinking, there’s an element of vagueness we can introduce to debase the notion of a god of (mono)theism.

Take, for instance, timelessness. A Christian will posit that their god has no beginning; he’s eternal and exists outside of time. All well and good. Let’s say there’s another being who had a beginning outside of the universe billions of years ago, e.g., Satan. What disqualifies this being from being timeless as well, especially given that we can’t ascertain the beginning of this being’s existence? In other words, if god is present at point 0 and then Satan at point 0.00000005, what difference is there? There are some beginnings that result in a virtual eternity and so, just like there are different infinities, there are different eternities, different versions of timelessness.

The same goes for omniscience. What if there’s a being that knows all things except one thing; let’s suppose this being doesn’t know how to play billiards. What is the difference between an omniscient being who knows all things and another being who knows all things save the required know-how to play billiards? Again, as there are different infinities, there are different levels of omniscience and we simply wouldn’t be able to distinguish between a being who knows everything and one who knows everything except for how to play billiards.

Omnipotence, omnipresence, the capacity to be personal, and so on, all fall victim to vagueness, and as such, the same defeater that exists for Godel’s Ontological Argument, namely that parallel arguments work just as well (see Oppy 1996), also exists for the notion of the so-called god of monotheism. There is no such entity. It is logically possible that, given vagueness, there are millions of beings that fit the description. However, one should not draw ontological conclusions on the basis of logical considerations. Just because there could be a million such beings doesn’t mean they actually exist; likewise, just because one such being is logically possible doesn’t mean it actually exists. The god that apologetic arguments allude to is a product of Christian obfuscation.

Given that Christians are overly fond of deductive arguments, I will do my best to formulate an Argument From Vagueness, which isn’t necessarily an argument on its own. Let’s consider Plantinga’s Victorious Ontological Argument:

A being has maximal excellence in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good in W; and

A being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence in every possible world.

It is possible that there is a being that has maximal greatness.

Therefore, possibly, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being exists.

Therefore, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists.

Now, consider a parallel Argument from Vagueness. D1 is crucial to the argument.

D1: A being with maximal excellence* has omnipotence* (which is to be so close to all-powerful that its lone incapacity is negligible; it once failed to push a universe to the left), omniscience* (which is to be virtually all-knowing; it doesn’t know how to play billiards), and perfectly good* (which is to be virtually morally perfect, but it once told a white lie). Maximal greatness* is to have maximal excellence* across all possible worlds.

A being has maximal excellence* in a given possible world W iff it is omnipotent*, omniscient*, and wholly good* in W.

A being has maximal greatness* if it has maximal excellence* in every possible world.

It is possible that there is a being that has maximal greatness*.

Therefore, possibly, it is necessarily true that an omniscient*, omnipotent*, and perfectly good* being exists.

Therefore, it is necessarily true that an omniscient*, omnipotent* and perfectly good* being exists.

Once this counter-argument is offered, what a Christian has left is the bare assertion that a being with maximal excellence* isn’t truly god because it has negligible limitations. The question remains: how do we know that the purported attributes of god are true? It is, as it will always be, a matter of faith. There is no way to ascertain that god is eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient. We can ask whether he is perfectly moral, but that’s a separate issue entirely. The thrust that Arguments From Vagueness drive is that there’s no justification for speaking of any infinity with such certainty. There may be an infinity so near to the one a theist reveres that the differences are negligible. That’s precisely what these arguments are designed for.

A Christian on the Humans of New York Instagram page brought up the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument (LCA) and named a few of its Christian defenders. Like I’m fond of pointing out, in naming just Christian defenders of the argument, it is likely he hasn’t considered actual objections. He’s read a degraded form of objections via the lens of these Christian authors. This is why I call apologetics, pseudo-philosophy.

In actual philosophical discourse, the participants in a given discussion are as charitable to one another as possible and they try very hard to ensure that nothing is lost in translation. They constantly correct themselves if they misinterpret what their opponent has said or they attempt to show that their interpretation better captures what their opponent is trying to say. Apologists don’t do this. Apologists straw man an objection, sometimes in ways that seem sophisticated, in order to make the argument or counter-argument easier to address. This is precisely why I advised him to deal with J.L. Mackie, for example–to read him directly and not through the lens of one of his favored authors. Then he would find that even Christians reject the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument (LCA).

A quick example of what I mean: in responding to my Argument From Cosmology, my opponent says that the opposite of my conclusion is as follows: the fact that an x can’t be shown to exist in relation to y doesn’t mean that x doesn’t exist*; in other words, that god can’t be shown to exist in relation to the Earth doesn’t mean god doesn’t exist. Yet on Judaism and Christianity, god created the Earth. Modern science tells us that planets have no creator; they form naturally over an extended period of time. We have real time data of planet formation in other systems. The history of our planet doesn’t resemble anything mentioned in the Bible. By extension, I argue that god doesn’t exist in relation to the universe, since he didn’t create it. Modern cosmology tells us as much.

His assertion is not enough to refute my argument. In fact, all he’s concluding is the opposite of what he misunderstood as my conclusion. My actual conclusion is this: x does not exist in relation to y iff it is necessary that x exist in relation to y. If god did not create the Earth or the universe, he doesn’t exist in relation to either, and by extension, doesn’t exist; however, on Christianity, it is necessary that he does. This is precisely what his favored LCA says. Through the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), for every being or state of affairs that exist, there is a sufficient reason for why they exist. It then adds, that for every being or state of affairs that exist, there is a necessary reason for why they exist. Therefore, god is the necessary and sufficient reason for why these states of affairs exist.

My Argument From Cosmology best captures a decisive criticism of the LCA without directly engaging it. J.L. Mackie stated that PSR need not be assumed by reason. Reason only asks for antecedent causes and conditions that explain each being or state of affairs. These are considered facts until they themselves are explained by something prior to them. On reason, nothing is prerequisite beyond this.

Thus, going back to my conclusion, x does not exist in relation to y iff it is necessary that x exist in relation to y. In order for Christianity to hold true, god would have had to create the Earth and the universe. If we have reason to doubt that he created the Earth, and modern science establishes this conclusively, then we have much reason to doubt that he created the universe. If the Earth can be explained by antecedent causes and conditions, then the universe can as well. My argument offers a number of plausible explanations fielded in modern cosmology all whilst arguing that there cannot be the type of causation Christians would require, i.e., the type of causation that allows for an immaterial agent to create material objects. At best, such causation is unknowable and it is probable that there will be no hard evidence for it; hence the Christian must retreat to agnosticism. At worst, such causation is impossible and there cannot be any evidence for it; thus, the Christian must retreat to atheism.

Ultimately, my argument addresses the LCA by implication, i.e., my argument implies a defeater of the LCA. Therefore, I do not have to address it directly. The same can be said of the KCA. Rebuttals to both arguments are implicit in my argument. That fact alone should give apologists pause.

In any case, my point has been made: apologetics is pseudo-philosophy. Apologists prop it up by being uncharitable and purposely (in most cases) misinterpreting a claim or argument made by atheists. Apologists are also modern sophists: it matters not how things might be or probably are; what matters is what they think is the case, what they say is the case, or what they deem possible–as though possibility implies probability. Apologists are also quite fond of straw men, which they use to make their arguments seem superior to those of their opponents. Unlike them, I have defined PSR correctly and I’ve summarized the LCA charitably. However, I’ve also shown that my Argument From Cosmology considers the LCA, albeit indirectly. My argument implies a decisive blow to the LCA. It is therefore necessary to deal with my argument directly; it isn’t enough to choose a favored argument and deem it superior on the basis of a misinterpretation of my conclusion.

*His assessment is correct assuming that x isn’t necessary with relation to y. The fact that I (x) cannot be explained with relation to an invention (y) doesn’t mean I do not exist. Even the actual inventor of invention (y) doesn’t have this sort of connection to the invention in question. Another agent could have been the inventor. On Christianity, however, there are no other gods and hence no other creators. Thus, if god did not create the Earth, there is reason to doubt he created anything else in the universe and therefore, the universe itself. As stated, for Christianity to be true, it need only be shown that god is necessary in this possible world; the LCA, as originally formulated, wants Anselm’s deity and therefore, on the LCA, god is necessary in all possible worlds. My argument casts much doubt on this, especially since god is the necessary being antecedent to all contingent beings. If this connection fails on a minor front, e.g., god didn’t create all baseballs, that’s fine, for even then he would underlie the reason for the reason of the baseballs, namely human beings. If it fails on a major front, as I’ve shown in the case of the Earth and all planets for that matter, a glaring problem arises for Christians, for even if they posit a being that willed the laws of physics, what they have is a deity far removed from the deity in the Bible. That would make for a separate discussion altogether.

It is often argued by conservative Christians that Hitler was an atheist. In the same breath, they also argue that he was never a Christian. Both of these claims are false. So my purpose here is twofold: to disabuse such people of the notion that Hitler was an atheist and to trace the development of the anti-Christian views he eventually espoused, views that, I will argue, are the direct result of his anti-Semitic views. I will not argue, as Richard Carrier does, that we can’t trust the English translations of Table Talks.1 While it is the case that context and words may have been left out, Carrier’s thesis is unnecessary for our purposes. My purpose, as stated above, is to trace Hitler’s anti-Semitism to its definite end and more importantly, to discuss the Christian roots of his anti-Semitism. Let us begin by observing some of his earlier confessions. One of the more commonly cited confessions is the following:

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice…For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.2

Emphasis mine. Four times in this section of a speech he gave in 1933, he repeats the phrase “as a Christian.” “Summoned men to fight against [the Jews]” and “The Jewish poison” are phrases I singled out for reasons that’ll be obvious shortly. Hitler also stated:

His [the Jew’s] life is of this world only and his mentality is as foreign to the true spirit of Christianity as is character was foreign to the great Founder of this new creed two thousand years ago. And the Founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of His estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God; because then, as always, they used religion as a means of advancing their commercial interests. But at that time Christ was nailed to the Cross for his attitude towards the Jews.3

Emphasis mine. Whether or not anti-Semitism can be found in earlier versions of the Gospels and Acts is not up for debate. The Bible Hitler read and the Bible Christians currently read definitely have anti-Semitism within their pages. That the Jews wanted Jesus crucified because he was calling himself their king can be found in these verses: see Luke 23:1-3, which is to be read in conjunction with Luke 22:66-71 and 23:5-19. Also, Acts 2:36 and 3:13-17 explicitly blame the Jews and recall, it’s widely held that the same anonymous author wrote both Luke and Acts.

One must ask: if these sentiments weren’t original to the earliest Christians, how did these sentiments get into the Gospels and Acts and why? The reason, if one is familiar with the Church Fathers and later influential Christians, is obvious: anti-Semitism was a sentiment felt by some proto-Orthodox Christians, so it’s no wonder Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Lutherans, and Protestants came to harbor such sentiments. Let us consider key examples and then show the salient connection such views have to Adolf Hitler’s views.

Perhaps the most important point to be made here is that anti-Semitic views are strongest in the later Gospels, John most specifically. Samuel Sandmel, who was Professor Emeritus of Bible and Hellenistic Literature at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, stated: “John is widely regarded as either the most anti-Semitic or at least the most overtly anti-Semitic of the gospels.”4 Robert Kysar adds:

Little has been done to ameliorate that harsh judgment since it was first written. While efforts have been made to soften the impact of the tone of John when it comes to Jews and Judaism, the fact remains that a reading of the gospel tends to confirm Sandmel’s judgment. Still, recent theories for understanding the historical setting of the writing of the Fourth Gospel do offer some ways of interpreting the harshness with which the gospel treats Jews and Judaism. Such theories do not change the tone of the gospel but offer a way of explaining that tone.5

The Gospel of John would serve as the basis for anti-Semitic sentiments expressed by later Christians. Ignatius stated: “[Jesus Christ] made known the one and only true God, His Father, and underwent the passion, and endured the cross at the hands of the Christ-killing Jews.”6 This is in clear agreement with the verses cited earlier. His sentiments were no doubt bolstered by Luke, John, and Acts. Justin Martyr is more elaborate when rebuking Jews. He openly condemns them in stating:

For other nations have not inflicted on us and on Christ this wrong to such an extent as you have, who in very deed are the authors of the wicked prejudice against the Just One, and us who hold by Him. For after that you had crucified Him, the only blameless and righteous Man,– through whose stripes those who approach the Father by Him are healed, –when you knew that He had risen from the dead and ascended to heaven, as the prophets foretold He would, you not only did not repent of the wickedness which you had committed.7

The proto-Orthodox view found in Luke, John, Acts came to be the Orthodox view. Unfortunately, these anti-Semitic sentiments didn’t stop there. Catholics took in Orthodox dirty laundry and this was best illustrated by Pope Leo who stated:

And when morning was come all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death.” This morning, O ye Jews, was for you not the rising, but the setting of the sun, nor did the wonted daylight visit your eyes, but a night of blackest darkness brooded on your naughty hearts.This morning overthrew for you the temple and its altars, did away with the Law and the Prophets, destroyed the Kingdom and the priesthood, turned all your feasts into eternal mourning. For ye resolved on a mad and bloody counsel, ye “fat bulls,” ye “many oxen,” ye “roaring” wild beasts, ye rabid “dogs,” to give up to death the Author of life and the LORD of glory; and, as if the enormity of your fury could be palliated by employing the verdict of him, who ruled your province, you lead Jesus bound to Pilate’s judgment, that the terror-stricken judge being overcome by your persistent shouts, you might choose a man that was a murderer for pardon, and demand the crucifixion of the Saviour of the world.8

Pope Leo dehumanizes Jews similarly to how Hitler eventually dehumanized them. They’re now “fat bulls,” “many oxen,” “wild beasts,” and “rapid dogs.” Luther apparently tried to usher in change. Lutheran and Protestant disagreement with Catholics is well documented, but apparently, anti-Semitism wasn’t something Luther and his sympathizers saw fit to change. He also dehumanizes and maligns Jews. He states:

The Jews are a base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.” They are full of the “devil’s faeces …which they wallow in like swine.” The synagogue was a “defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut …” He argues that their synagogues and schools be set on fi re, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these “poisonous envenomed worms” should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.9

He sort of sounds like Adolf himself! The “Jewish poison” is now “these poisonous envenomed worms.” Hitler would eventually do all this and much more against the Jews. Hitler, in fact, cited Luther as an influence:

The great protagonists are those who fight for their ideas and ideals despite the fact that they receive no recognition at the hands of their contemporaries. They are the men whose memories will be enshrined in the hearts of the future generations….To this group belong not only the genuinely great statesmen but all the great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great we have such men as Martin Luther and Richard Wagner.10

Emphasis mine. Given this context, it’s clear that Hitler considered Luther a great reformer. Given his anti-Semitism, it’s clear that he was familiar with Luther’s anti-Semitic polemics. Tangentially, one has to wonder whether Lutherans even care about the polemics of their Founder. Luther was to Christianity what ISIL is to modern Muslims–extremist and proud of it.

We’ve seen how Hitler felt about Jews given my extensive analysis above. But how did he feel about atheism?

We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations; we have stamped it out.11

His feelings toward Christianity apparently changed, assuming the English translations of his Table Talks are reliable. He believed Bolshevism was the bastard child of Christianity and that Christianity should die a natural death due to a better understanding of the universe. He stated that Christianity has reached the height of absurdity and that it was invented by sick brains.12 We will see some of this in more detail shortly.

Perhaps his views toward atheism changed as well. Though conservative Christians would love for that to be the case, if they were to read the Table Talks, they’d find that his views on atheism remained the same. He states: “The Russians have no God, and that doesn’t prevent them from being able to face death. We don’t want to educate anyone in atheism.”13 This is in keeping with what he said about secular schooling: “Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.”14

It doesn’t stop there. He also states: “An uneducated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal)” (Ibid. [13]) Well then! Now he’s dehumanizing atheists as well. No honest person will bypass these facts, so Christians who seek to poison the well by saying that Hitler was an atheist should consider his confessions.

This isn’t to say that I don’t find Hitler’s comments about Christianity and Christians to be disturbing. If we can rely on these English translations, then this is a real departure from his earlier views. What exactly happened over the course of his reign that led to this departure? I read his Table Talks more closely and discovered the obvious truth staring me in the face. Hitler’s anti-Semitic views are well documented above, but where did these anti-Christian views come from? I will argue that his anti-Christian views are the necessary and logical end to his anti-Semitic views. In other words, if Christianity is the bastard child of Judaism, which it demonstrably is, then one who hates Jews may come to hate Christians. Of course, given his reign, there are more layers here. Like Stalin, he had to neutralize the Church’s influence. However, his Table Talks are quite revealing. Hitler states in detail:

The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity. Bolshevism practises a lie of the same nature, when it claims to bring liberty to men, whereas in reality it seeks only to enslave them. In the ancient world, the relations between men and gods were founded on an instinctive respect. It was a world enlightened by the idea of tolerance. Christianity was the first creed in the world to exterminate its adversaries in the name of love. Its key-note is intolerance. (Ibid.)

Hitler was well aware of the connections between the Abrahamic religions for he also states that without Christianity, we wouldn’t have Islam. In keeping with what I said in terms of neutralizing the Church, he had this to say about the potential for organization that Christianity offers: “We must likewise prevent them from returning to Christianity. That would be a grave fault, for it would be giving them a form of organization” (Ibid.)

Though Hitler desired the slow death of Christianity, he didn’t want that to result in non-belief:

One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity would entail the disappearance of belief in God. That’s not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most men the opportunity to concretise the feeling they have of supernatural realities. Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them? (Ibid.)

Apparently, Luther’s influence was still felt. “The divine that is within them” sounds a whole lot like Luther’s sensus divinitatis (sense of divinity). As is also well documented, Hitler and the Nazis wrote their own Bible. They more or less appropriated Christian beliefs and mixed and matched them with pagan woo woo. To further establish my argument–that Hitler’s anti-Christian views are the logical end of his anti-Semitic views–I’ll leave my readers with the following: “Christianity is a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilization by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society” (Ibid.)

My argument is parsimonious. Hitler’s anti-Christian views are the logical end to, the direct result of, the path of least resistance taken by, his anti-Semitic views. This, to my mind, is the clearest conclusion to be made. Does it follow that Nazism is the result of Christianity? No. That isn’t what I’m intending to argue. From this, however, we can gather, quite conclusively, that he was never an atheist and that he was, in fact, opposed to atheism and secular schooling.

Given my analysis, the Christian arguing that Hitler was never a Christian and that he was an atheist should abandon both claims. Both claims are patently false and are clearly denied by Hitler’s confessions. He was never an atheist and early during his reign he identified as a Christian. These are clear facts. What’s also clear is that his anti-Semitism was deeply rooted in the Bible and the confessions of Christians, Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, and Protestant. What was perhaps less clear and what I intended to highlight is that his later anti-Christian views developed from his anti-Semitic views. Whether or not I succeeded at that is for the reader to decide, but what clearly does not succeed are the claims conservative Christians make.